Habitat Program Helps Attract Wildlife

Fri., Sept. 5, 1997

From Staff And Wire Reports

It’s never too late or the wrong season to attract wildlife to your back yard. In fact, sometimes winter is the more interesting season to watch the birds, bunnies and deer hang around your feeders.

Need help attracting critters to your yard? There’s a Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program run by the National Wildlife Federation that will provide everything you need to create a wildlife refuge in your yard, even if you live in the city.

An information packet is available for $12.95 and includes a program application, a booklet on planning and planting a habitat, and a book about one person’s experience, “The Backyard Naturalist.”

Information is available from the National Wildlife Federation, PO Box 50281, Hampden Station, Baltimore, MD 21211; (410) 516-6583 or on the Web at www.nwf.org.

A big, dirty, business

Three of four American households keep gardens, says Bruce Butterfield, research director for the National Gardening Association. On average, each family spends around $300 a year, he says. It all comes to more than $22 billion a year for hoses, roses, hellebores, chainsaws, mulch and millions of impatiens.

Hot seller

How’s this for an original sales pitch? A fire-damaged New Hampshire home on Route 302 between the Attitash ski area and Crawford Notch is being advertised as a “Spectacular Charcoal New Englander.” Among features listed for the house, which has part of the roof missing: “passive solar heat, natural air conditioning, sunken living rooms, exposed beams … celestial view … toasty home atmosphere.”

Pushing nostalgia

“We baby boomers equate real life with the life we lived as children.” That and a yuppie phenomenon called “upscale simplicity” explain why sales of push-powered lawn mowers are up nearly 150 percent over five years ago, the Wall Street Journal reports. The American Forecaster Almanac, a trend-spotting publication, predicts push-mower sales could keep climbing at 20 percent to 30 percent annually.

Back to the future

Speaking of everything old being new again, homebuilders increasingly are seeking to give their new developments the patina of age. So the front porch is back, houses crowd narrow streets again, and leafy alleys lead to garages in the rear. “Before the 1880s, why did things look so good?” asks Washington-area developer Joe Alfandre. “There was a language to it. That’s what I think we’ve brought back.”

, DataTimes

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